About the Slovenian Prime Minister of Flair

As I think I mentioned, I spent the last five days road-tripping across Austria and Slovenia. Due to time constraints and FCC regulations, I can’t begin to tell you how amazing it was, so I’ll let one word suffice where my many will fail: ka-blamo!

To summarize further before launching – arms and legs gesticulating wildly, face twitching from agonized expression to agonized expression faster than man can reckon – into the focal point of my soliloquy, the following things happened over the weekend: Kelly and I thrust our favorite book, Eyeheart Everything, onto the other five members of our crew, and I read no less than six stories from within aloud at various choice moments with mixed receptions; I forded a river deep within a gorge in Slovenia with Pablo Esperanto – Kelly’s guitar – and a beer hoisted above my head, then swam back across and jumped off a cliff into it; I climbed to the top of a clock tower and almost fell off when the bell rang unexpectedly, deafeningly; I swam naked with six others in the Adriatic at midnight as Slovenia joined the EU; I conversed with an Austrian bartender at the inn at Villach and he gave me a free shot of his own moonshine; we tried to cross the Julian alps but were thwarted by a sudden, four-foot wall of snow; Kelly and I ate one and a half jars of a generic Austrian Nutella substitute on bananas, biscuits, Doppelkeks, pretzels, or, failing all that, our groping fingers; we climbed a mountain in southwestern Austria, only to find a quaint, modern cafe and souvenir store nestled into the walls of the ancient castle on top – the monks powered the espresso maker by horse prior to the 60′s; we stayed a night at a hotel with a tupping hottub; I forgot my swimsuit and a vodka-soaked towel I stole from my landlady in the room of an elderly woman in Piran; a member of our group lost her passport in Lubljana on our last day and had to negotiate her way back into Austria with a photocopy; I wandered a graveyard for an hour in the pouring rain with no coat or umbrella; I watched a 3-D movie about historic tourist locations in Lubljana, paying 450 Slovenian Tolars to do so; we drove through the Italian city Treiste three times trying to find which of the many, many signs pointing to Slovenia was accurate; while reading aloud the “useful phrases” portion of a Slovenia guide book at dinner, I invented a section called “negotiating with prostitutes” and convinced at least one person present that the phrases I read (“the men at the dock recommended you”, “I would like a refund; you said your breasts were real”) were actually in the book; Kelly spun fire in the town square of Piran, after we’d asked the cop standing just outside if it was alright; I saw more Basilicas than I can count; we toured a cave containing the largest underground river canyon in Europe; I played a set of five songs for a group of enthusiastic – or perhaps just drunken – Slovenians at the bar of the self-described “cheapest hotel in Lubljana”, at their request of course.

That may be the longest sentence I’ve ever written for this site. Somewhere, an ex-editor of mine at the Daily just twitched as if stung by something. The clauses aren’t in chronological order, by the way. As if!

Shortly after the last incident listed, all seven of our caravan headed to the central park in Lubljana, Slovenia’s capital and, with 200,000 residents, its only large city, where a celebration of its induction into the EU was taking place. We ordered some beers and sat down to catch the tail end of a performance by a man whose name I later learned but have since forgotten; we just called him Leather Pants or the Slovenian Prime Minister of Flair (the new President of Austria, Dr. Hans Fischer, just yesterday bestowed an analogous title upon myself, which I humbly accepted). Although we spoke only one word of Slovenian, his performance was outstanding. Some combination of his skin-tight blue leather pants, his singing voice, and his frantic, non-stop effeminate energy endeared him to our hearts almost instantly. We laughed hysterically while he pranced on and off the stage, at one point giving a very convincing pantomime of a heavy-metal guitar solo in synch with the canned music. The girls on the trip, Kelly excepted, fell in love with his guitar player, who was definitely cuter and probably not gay. I have pictures of both of these people, which I promise to Someday do Something with. We snapped the photos after approaching them after their performance and complimenting them on it. After a few minutes’ praise and idle chatter – they both spoke fluent English – Leather Pants invited us to accompany him to a cafe down the street, and so all seven of us hopped onto the back of his entourage and followed him there. He regaled us with stories about what it’s like to be ostentatiously gay in Slovenia – not as rough as you might think, as it turns out – while the girls excepting Kelly, namely Lisa, Kassandra, and Michelle, hung onto the younger, cuter, less-probably homosexual guitar player and batted their eyelashes enticingly at him.

In the cafe, we surrounded him and a few of his friends and ordered beers while he entertained with songs. At some point Kelly and I introduced Pablo, without whom we almost never go anywhere, and duets ensued. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Flair had business with the other patrons and stopped in to check on the American crew only rarely. The guitar player had a fairly impressive retinue of American songs up his sleeve, and kept us consistently amused for a few hours. It this point, it’s germane to mention that Slovenia is a beautiful, beautiful country. The landscape is rolling and littered with valleys and hills, all of which are packed with breathtaking verdure. Everywhere you look is green, leafy, and gorgeous – something to do with the mountains and oceans makes the entire country essentially a big rainforest. We had this scenery to occupy our attention, seated on the lip of the green canal, while he played. It was pleasant. Since I can’t remember either of their names, it would be fairly difficult to ascertain the precise level of fame they enjoy, but who knows? Maybe I played guitar with one of Slovenia’s most eminent musical geniuses. And you didn’t.

So yeah, the weekend was a lot of fun. And I spent the money to prove it. Renting the van was convenient and all, but I’ve decided that my impending financial downfall renders hitchhiking a necessity from this point on. I’ll miss spreading my belongings across an entire vehicle, but money talks, and if I can’t get a ride I guess I’ll walk from now on.